Anathema
by lianeviolet
Summary: [The Ring] 20 years after the event, Aidan sorts through some demons of his own.


Title: Anathema  
  
Author: lianeviolet  
  
Email: lianeviolet@lycos.com  
  
Summary: 20 years after the event, Aidan sorts through some demons of his own.  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters of The Ring.  
  
Rating: PG-13 for language and tone.  
  
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Roses can be as blanched and ominous as the dress worn in my most lucid nightmares and visions; sallow roses upon a raven coffin is one of the last memories I can recall of my father, since Rachel would not allow an open casket for his wake. I strive to remember the cloudless and kind blue eyes that studied me awkwardly from the driver's seat the day that Rachel went on her desperate investigative journey and I sat drawing dreadful pictures from the backseat. I must mention that my mother kept none of my sketches after the incident, she burned them all like offerings to the gods to spare us from anymore harm and misfortune, as if only fire would kill whatever virus we had been infected with when I drew them. I know in the beginning she spent many nights awake, wondering, worrying, haunted by whatever was her last image of Noah, or perhaps more by the warm kiss upon her forehead the night before his death. I know this because she has mentioned that kiss from time to time trying to create nice memories of a father I never really knew, but she still will not discuss what fate befell Noah and what haunts her relentlessly. I can only speculate that if it is anything similar to what disturbs my sleep and any attempt at tranquil thoughts during my conscious hours, it is a marvel that Rachel has not been admitted to an asylum by now. I have anticipated that I could be headed that way at a million miles an hour, myself.  
  
I am writing this in direct defiance of my mother's wishes, she has always been vehement in her instruction that I should never talk about what happened or about anything in regard to the videotape or that abomination that disguises itself in the image of a little girl. She has also demanded that I never tell what was done in order to save my life and I have survived with that undeserved guilt ever since the moment she held her hand over mine and helped me insert a tape into a duplicating machine. I asked her what would happen to the next person who watched the tape, I know that bothered her, my mother was not without conscience, but I was everything to her. She had lost Noah and she was determined not to lose me, too. My mother never exonerated herself of what she did, leaving the tape in a video store for some unsuspecting person to pick up innocently. Rachel drowned her remorse in liquor many times until she fell asleep, a habit I now share, and I knew she did this even though she tried to keep it a secret. She has almost lost her job as a journalist, her working behavior has become sometimes erratic and non-professional, but it is alcohol, stress, guilt, and that overwhelming, bottomless hole of sorrow from which she cannot escape.  
  
Technology will eat itself, much like a snake devouring its tail; you may wonder what that means exactly, but I have a half a bottle of Jack Daniels sitting next to this laptop in this bland hotel out in the middle of nowhere, and that phrase sort of fogged its way into my brain's foreground, and it makes perfect sense to me now. Here's a tidbit of information that's even stranger: I haven't watched a movie or a television show in twenty years. Ever. Not once, and this is precisely why, as my fingers clack on this keyboard, that there is a large, empty space on the dresser of this room and a black, 19-inch, Zenith television sitting outside my locked, mahogany door with a doorknob sporting a "Do Not Disturb" sign that I can hear flittering in the breeze. Of course, I am aware that by putting up that sign, in a few hours there will be a phone call from the hotel maid asking if I want my room cleaned, but this does not matter since I will not be here by then.  
  
I don't really know where I'm going with this, I guess I was thinking there should be some sort of record of the events prior to and after the incident, perhaps it is just my journalism gene worming its way out from seclusion, I'm not sure, really. I am aware that I cannot stop my fingers on these keys, maybe this is my attempt at burning out the plague within me, blazing the visions out from behind my corneas, to be finally free of this weight I've carried for what seems like forever, or perhaps, I harbor too much hope for such an idea.  
  
Lately, I've been trying to research my roots, I have been almost obsessive about obtaining information about my father and I have since examined some of the few photographs Rachel kept of Noah to understand him and uncover any resemblances between us. I do have his color hair and there are times I am sure that this has disturbed Rachel, I have noticed sadness in her eyes when she has glanced toward my head on occasion. Now that I am older, I can see more of him within me, along with bits of my mother, but worse, for the few times I've glanced at myself in mirrors recently, I think I'm beginning to see her in me, too. She no longer appears over my shoulder, hovering in the background. Somewhere within the dark circles around my eyes and from my pale, unshaven and sleepless face, she is peering out, also.  
  
I know that, throughout my entire life, there has been talk about how strange it is that I should refer to my mother by her first name, "Rachel". It is rather simple, really, she insisted that I call her that from the time I was able to speak. I have always suspected it had been for the vain reason that Rachel associated the term "mother" with women of older age and the fact that being a parent was such a massive responsibility for her to take upon herself so young, calling her by her first name made things comfortable for her. Rachel is a brilliant and creative lady, as she has been as far back as I can remember, and her career has always taken a front seat to anything else, which I imagine is probably what pushed Noah away from her. Contrary to what people probably thought, I was never jealous or resentful of my mother's career, and I know some thought that I was neglected through most of my youth, but I want to clarify that this is not the case. I was quite the resourceful child, and I did take care of many things myself, Rachel did not dote on me, that is very clear, but there was definitely more love in my house than many of my friends experienced in their homes.  
  
I hate to speak her name, that malevolent creature has destroyed far too much that I have cared about in this life. It is true she took away the breath of my father and cousin, but she also stole any sense of normalcy and stability I might have had while growing up. I might actually understand what it would be like to live each day without complete terror. When Rachel first uncovered her existence and her horrific death at the hands of her own mother, I know Rachel struggled to understand how this woman could do such a thing to her own child, my mother felt such incredible sympathy for this young girl, but my mother was so misinformed. She could not even begin to envision the depth of evil that dwells in this unnamable thing, whatever it really is. It masqueraded as a child in human form for awhile, but even I cannot conceive its exact nature. This being showed my mother what she wanted to see, a helpless child destroyed by a mother that should have been nurturing and fiercely protective in order for Rachel to free her, but I am one of the few who knows the truth, and I am damned because of it.  
  
I have an abundance of irrational fears as I have had since I was a child, such as the television and videotapes I mentioned previously. Here is another stupid quirk: I left the motel where I was staying before this place because it had a well on the property, and I cannot sleep anywhere near a well, it makes the nightmares worse. I have reached the point where I dread driving during the dark hours, I see her lurking under trees, in the dead spaces where my headlights aren't reflected, sometimes in my rearview mirror, she enjoys this stalking, it is a morbid game for her. She is always somewhere within my peripheral vision, I covered all the mirrors in my house since she was always in them. Yet, I've never seen her true face, it is always hidden behind that shroud of hair; it is my belief that perhaps she only shows that to those about to die. She speaks to me in a whisper like crisp, dead leaves and says that although I escaped her wrath, I will never escape her. She tells me my father is with her in the well, along with all the others who perished by her hand. She says I, too, will join them eventually. I'm starting to believe her.  
  
I had never paid much mind to her threats and murmurs in my ear, it has always been the ghastly hallucinations and dreams I detest, such sick and vile things conjured from the depths of hell. My hell, I suppose. I told my mother when I was eight years old that she shows me things, well, no shit she shows me things, things beyond any form of comprehension, and it has been twenty years of these thoughts and pictures that has brought me to this point. There are times, in the silence of a night drenched in horrible images, when I almost wish I had died when I should have at eight years old, instead of just barely surviving in this wretched existence for all the years that have passed without any relief from this terror.  
  
The night Rachel pulled her remains from out of the well, she had visited me in a dream to show me the details of her death, how her mother smothered her with a plastic bag and hit her on the head with a rock before dumping her into the well. It was meant to be a dream of empathy, I felt and saw everything that she had, the peaceful landscape interrupted by surrounding blackness, the struggle for breath, the sharp, nauseating pain as the rock crashed down, and the freezing chill of well water seeping into my clothing. The water was so frigid, it seemed like it was penetrating my skin on route to my soul. The well had the dank scent of mildew and some unidentified metal, but these sensations were secondary to that awful cold, how she survived without hypothermia for seven days is just testament to the fact that this being was not human, not deep down anyway. I was experiencing her feelings of anger and hate, this great abyss of revulsion inside her that began to grow to immeasurable proportions. She intended this dream to be a means for me to understand her, for me to comprehend why she wanted people to suffer. Rachel believed that she just wanted to be heard, have her story spread to others, and maybe on some level part of that is true, but my mother doesn't realize how much Samara likes to kill, how much she likes to watch people as they die. I could not sympathize with this thing, that night or even now, because, I could sense the real evil beneath the false innocence and that human mask she wore.  
  
I should end this soon, since there is not a great deal of time left. Time is running out because, tonight, she will finally reveal her true face to me. I lied before when I said I hadn't watched anything in twenty years, I viewed a tape exactly a week ago, two minutes from now. It took me the last five years to track down a copy of that elusive tape for I had decided that it was time I confronted my fears. Water is seeping in under the hotel door from the outside and I am beginning to think there is truth in what is said, before you die, you see the ring. 


End file.
